Only three countries had an average monthly health inflation of 2% or more in the last two months: Argentina (5.7%), Turkey (3.3%) and Finland (2.3%). Nineteen countries had average monthly inflation between 0.3% and 2%.
Of the total number of countries where inflation rose, Argentina is the one that presented the greatest difference, with 4.2 percentage points. It is followed by Finland and Sweden, with 2.4 and 1.3 percentage points, respectively. Graph 1 shows the set of countries, ordered from the highest to the lowest inflation in the two-month period March-April 2022.
“One way to appreciate the relative magnitude of the rise in retail health prices in Argentina is by comparing the average monthly inflation for the period March-April 2022 in our country with the median for countries. In effect, while in Argentina the average monthly prices rose by 5.7%, in the group of countries in the sample they rose by 0.4%. In other words, locally, retail health prices rose 13 times more than in the average country.“, establishes the economist in charge of the study, Nadin Argañaraz.
“When you look at health inflation in the last 52 months, that is, since January 2018, Argentina has always been above the rest of the countries in this group. That is to say, without COVID or invasion between countries, Argentina already had higher levels of health inflation,” says the analyst.
“The essential question is why in the rest of the countries the increase in health prices was 0.3 percentage points per month (from 0.1% to 0.3%) and in Argentina it was 3.9 percentage points (from 1.5% to 5.7%) In addition to a higher rate of inflation, there has now been a much higher rate of impact from the rise in international prices. Such an essential service for the population with its rise in prices deteriorates the purchasing power of the population and modifies the structure of consumption”concluded the study.
Source: Ambito
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